Archive for February 18, 2013

We reach out to past attendees of the Great Demo workshop and ask them how they have applied the principles and techniques covered and what the impact has been on their business. Chris Kane of VendorRisk attended a workshop in 2012 and sent us this detailed response. It is reproduced here with his permission.

Great Demo’s Impact On The VendorRisk Sales Presentation

Software demos are the cornerstone of our sales process. We had successfully demonstrated our service to many prospects and closed a number of deals before we attended the Great Demo workshop, but we still felt that there was room for improvement.

One of the big changes we have made in putting the Great Demo methods into practice has been to cut the running time of our demo from an hour and 15 minutes or even two hours down to about 30 or 35 minutes. VendorRisk is a SaaS app, so our demos involve setting up the story, showing a few screenshots, and switching to the live app depending upon the prospect’s areas of interest.

Looking back we tended to bounce from topic to topic and feature to feature using a training model as our structure. Now we use a progression of simple to complex stories and use cases. As a result, our prospects more easily connect with how they can use the software for the commonly occurring–and then the less commonly occurring–situations that come up in managing vendor contracts.

We have also introduced a 15-minute phone conversation in advance of the main demo to help better understand a prospect’s critical business issues before we start the first demonstration. This has been very well received: our newer customers have told us that they feel like we’ve really listened to their needs and are showing them a demo tailored specifically for them–despite the fact that almost all our customers have the exact same issues! It’s increased our confidence going into the demo because we have fewer surprise issues or areas of concern.

We have seen the benefits of this preparation and change in delivery style in an increase in the percentage of prospects who become customers.

Great Demo! Public Workshop October 15-16, 2014

Our next public Great Demo! Workshop is scheduled to take place October 15-16 in San Jose, California.

This is an excellent opportunity for individuals, small groups or for teams that have new hires.

We’ve found that these events are most productive when there are two or more participants from each organization (singletons are also fine). This helps to mimic real-life interactions as much as possible, both when preparing demos and delivering them in the role-play sessions.